He says that in the year 1417 there appeared for the first time
in Germany a people uncouth, black, dirty, barbarous, called
in Italian “Ciani,” who indulge specially in thieving and cheating.
They had among them a count and a few knights well
dressed, others followed afoot. The women and children
travelled in carts. They also carried with them letters of safe-conduct
from the emperor Sigismund and other princes, and they
professed that they were engaged on a pilgrimage of expiation
for some act of apostasy.
The guilt of the Gipsies varies in the different versions of the story, but all agree that the Gipsies asserted that they came from their own country called “Litill Egypt,” and they had to go to Rome, to obtain pardon for that alleged sin of their forefathers. According to one account it was because they had not shown mercy to Joseph and Mary when they had sought refuge in Egypt from the persecution of Herod (Basel Chronicle). According to another, because they had forsaken the Christian faith for a while (Rhaetia, 1656), &c. But these were fables, no doubt connected with the legend of Cartaphylus or the Wandering Jew.
Krantz’s narrative continues as follows: This people have no country and travel through the land. They live like dogs and have no religion although they allow themselves to be baptized in the Christian faith. They live without care and gather unto themselves also other vagrants, men and women. Their old women practise fortune-telling, and whilst they are telling men of their future they pick their pockets. Thus far Krantz. It is curious that he should use the name by which these people were called in Italy, “Ciani.” Similarly Crusius, the author of the Annales Suevici, knows their Italian name Zigani and the French Bohémiens. Not one of these oldest writers mentions them as coppersmiths or farriers or musicians. The immunity which they enjoyed during their first appearance in western Europe is due to the letter of safe-conduct of the emperor. As it is of extreme importance for the history of civilization as well as the history of the Gipsies, it may find a place here. It is taken from the compilation of Felix Oefelius, Rerum Boicarum scriptores (Augsburg, 1763), ii. 15, who reproduces the “Diarium sexennale” of “Andreas Presbyter,” the contemporary of the first appearance of the Gipsies in Germany.
“Sigismundus Dei gratia Romanorum Rex semper Augustus, ac Hungariae, Bohemiae, Dalmatiae, Croatiae, &c. Rex Fidelibus nostris universis Nobilibus, Militibus, Castellanis, Officialibus, Tributariis, civitatibus liberis, opidis et eorum iudicibus in Regno et sub domino nostro constitutis ex existentibus salutem cum dilectione. Fidèles nostri adierunt in praesentiam personaliter Ladislaus Wayuoda Ciganorum cum aliis ad ipsum spectantibus, nobis humilimas porrexerunt supplicationes, huc in sepus in nostra praesentia supplicationum precum cum instantiâ, ut ipsis gratiâ nostra uberiori providere dignaremur. Unde nos illorum supplicatione illecti eisdem hanc libertatem duximus concedendam, qua re quandocunque idem Ladislaus Wayuoda et sua gens ad dicta nostra dominia videlicet civitates vel oppida pervenerint, ex tunc vestris fidelitatibus praesentibus firmiter committimus et mandamus ut eosdem Ladislaum Wayuodam et Ciganos sibi subiectos omni sine impedimento ac perturbatione aliquali fovere ac conservare debeatis, immo ab omnibus impetitionibus seu offensionibus tueri velitis: Si autem inter ipsos aliqua Zizania seu perturbatio evenerit ex parte, quorumcunque ex tunc non vos nec aliquis alter vestrum, sed idem Ladislaus Wayuoda iudicandi et liberandi habeat facultatem. Praesentes autem post earum lecturam semper reddi iubemus praesentanti.
“Datum in Sepus Dominica die ante festum St Georgii Martyris Anno Domini MCCCCXXIII., Regnorum nostrorum anno Hungar. XXXVI., Romanorum vero XII., Bohemiae tertio.”
Freely translated this reads: “We Sigismund by the grace of God emperor of Rome, king of Hungary, Bohemia, &c. unto all true and loyal subjects, noble soldiers, commanders, castellans, open districts, free towns and their judges in our kingdom established and under our sovereignty, kind greetings. Our faithful voivode of the Tsigani with others belonging to him has humbly requested us that we might graciously grant them our abundant favour. We grant them their supplication, we have vouchsafed unto them this liberty. Whenever therefore this voivode Ladislaus and his people should come to any part of our realm in any town, village or place, we commit them by these presents, strongly to your loyalty and we command you to protect in every way the same voivode Ladislaus and the Tsigani his subjects without hindrance, and you should show kindness unto them and you should protect them from every trouble and persecution. But should any trouble or discord happen among them from whichever side it may be, then none of you nor anyone else belonging to you should interfere, but this voivode Ladislaus alone should have the right of punishing and pardoning. And we moreover command you to return these presents always after having read them. Given in our court on Sunday the day before the Feast of St George in the year of our Lord 1423. The 36th year of our kingdom of Hungary, the 12th of our being emperor of Rome and the 3rd of our being king of Bohemia.”
There is no reason to doubt the authenticity of this document, which is in no way remarkable considering that at that time the Gipsies must have formed a very considerable portion of the inhabitants of Hungary, whose king Sigismund was. They may have presented the emperor’s grant of favours to Alexander prince of Moldavia in 1472, and obtained from him safe-conduct and protection, as mentioned above.
No one has yet attempted to explain the reason why the Gipsies should have started in the 14th and especially in the first half of the 15th century on their march westwards. But if, as has been assumed above, the Gipsies had lived for some length of time in Rumelia, and afterwards spread thence across the Danube and the plains of Transylvania, the incursion of the Turks into Europe, their successive occupation of those very provinces, the overthrow of the Servian and Bulgarian kingdoms and the dislocation of the native population, would account to a remarkable degree for the movement of the Gipsies: and this movement increases in volume with the greater successes of the Turks and with the peopling of the country by immigrants from Asia Minor. The first to be driven from their homes would no doubt be the nomadic element, which felt itself ill at ease in its new surroundings, and found it more profitable first to settle in larger numbers in Walachia and Transylvania and thence to spread to the western countries of Europe. But their immunity from persecution did not last long.
Later History.—Less than fifty years from the time that they emerge out of Hungary, or even from the date of the Charter of the emperor Sigismund, they found themselves exposed to the fury and the prejudices of the people whose good faith they had abused, whose purses they had lightened, whose barns they had emptied, and on whose credulity they had lived with ease and comfort. Their inborn tendency to roaming made them the terror of the peasantry and the despair of every legislator who tried to settle them on the land. Their foreign appearance, their unknown tongue and their unscrupulous habits forced the legislators of many countries to class them with rogues and vagabonds, to declare them outlaws and felons and to treat them with extreme severity. More than one judicial murder has been committed against them. In some places they were suspected as Turkish spies and treated accordingly, and the murderer of a Gipsy was often regarded as innocent of any crime.
Weissenbruch describes the wholesale murder of a group of Gipsies, of whom five men were broken on the wheel, nine perished on the gallows, and three men and eight women were decapitated. This took place on the 14th and 15th of November 1726. Acts and edicts were issued in many countries from the end of the 15th century onwards sentencing the “Egyptians” to exile under pain of death. Nor was this an empty threat. In Edinburgh four “Faas” were hanged in 1611 “for abyding within the kingdome, they being Egiptienis,” and in 1636 at Haddington the Egyptians were ordered “the men to be hangied and the weomen to be drowned, and suche of the weomen as hes children to be scourgit throw the burg and burnt in the cheeks.” The burning on the cheek or on the back was a common penalty.
